There has been a significant need to measure exposure information associated with various types of media to enable advertisers to optimize their advertising efforts. For example, in publishing and magazine advertising, there is an ongoing need to estimate consumers' readership of printed media such as magazines as well as the characteristics associated with consumer exposure to advertisements in the magazines.
One conventional method of measuring exposure characteristics involves creating and distributing surveys in which a sample of participants or respondents in a study are asked questions about what they read or saw. The surveys may be consumer-driven, where a consumer compiles a diary of information about what they have seen or answers questions from a preconfigured survey. However, such techniques put a substantial burden on the consumer to record exposure data and often result in incomplete or inaccurate records.
Alternately, surveys may be researcher-driven and involve a staff interviewer who may contact a random sample of respondents to discuss their exposure to various forms of media. However, such techniques rely on the memory of the consumer, which may result in inaccurate data and necessitate additional personnel/training costs. For certain forms of digital media, data acquisition may be incorporated into software that records characteristics associated with a consumer's web navigation. A key disadvantage of this method is that consumers may be very concerned about data privacy issues. Yet another conventional approach to data acquisition involves incorporating a data capture element into a data capture module that is worn by an individual and collects data transmitted from transmitters inserted into magazines. This approach requires a consumer to wear the recording device and consequently, significantly burdens the consumer.